Founders thought the Muskegon Film Festival would be a showcase for the downtown Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts, in particular the ornate auditorium of the venue's 1,748-seat Frauenthal Theater.

Spin doctors could not slap on defibrillation paddles and jolt this corpse back to life.

The patient had been on life support for at least a year, likely longer.

When organizers of the Muskegon Film Festival announced its death Jan. 4, a prepared statement buried the lead.

It reported that the festival had named Anthony E. Griffin of Grand Rapids as 2010’s “Michigan Filmmaker of the Year.”

Oh, by the way, one of the festival’s sole survivors finally got around to mentioning, “We ... felt we had done all we could with the festival at this point and that it was time to retire it.”

Those sounds in the background were nails pounding into the coffin, dirt shoveling into the grave.

Do not expect a resurrection.

Chances are that the Muskegon Film Festival will not go all biblical and pull a Lazarus.

For practical purposes, the festival had been dead since 2009.

Founded in 2001, it was not held in 2010.

That was not the first time the annual festival had proven less than yearly.

Scheduling screw ups at MFF’s initial venue, the downtown Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts, once resulted in the festival being postponed, and transferred to a different time of year; Early spring became the dead of winter, and the Muskegon Film Festival shivered in The Big Chill.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST ALERT: From its birth at which I, as the Muskegon Chronicle’s film critic and a member of the original board of directors, was present, the Muskegon Film Festival had suffered labored breathing and an irregular heartbeat.

Money and volunteers, the life’s blood of any festival, were tough to come by.

So was a steady following. For reasons ranging from inclement weather to lack of interest, attendance at the Muskegon Film Festival was erratic.

Any shortcoming did extend from lack of effort. Everybody who climbed onboard worked hard.

Nobody, however, succeeds at much of anything without a lot of help from their friends. Sometimes you simply don’t have enough friends.

Within a few years after the first Muskegon Film Festival, attrition began to erode its foundation.

One by one, the festival’s founders dropped, like those cliche flies, out.

The thrill was gone.

As were they.

While on last year’s hiatus that turned out to be fatal, the Muskegon Film Festival had been involved in some tangential projects.

In its absence which allegedly was temporary, an ad hoc event called the Lakeside Film Festival popped up at the Harbor Theater.

In a Chronicle story posted on the newspaper’s web site Jan. 4 and that hit the hardcopy edition a couple days later, one of the Muskegon Film Festival’s two co-directors suggested the Lakeside Film Festival as a viable alternative.

“They were good and successful,” said Sarah Rooks, “and I don’t think there’s a need for two film festivals.”

What about one?

The operators of the Harbor Theater have made no secret about the Lakeside Film Festival exhausting them.

They’ve said they have little or no interest in mounting a second Lakeside Film Festival.

Nature abhors a vacuum, but this looks like one void that nobody figures to fill.

Running a film festival is a 24/7, year-round project, all-consuming.

Unless something happens to change the status quo, looks like the notion of a regular film festival in Muskegon has died of consumption.

Take the word of Rooks and her co-director, Mat Moore, who in the end were virtually the Muskegon Film Festival’s only real workers: If you care, you become a slave to the project. It becomes a second job, takes over your life.

Endeavors rise or fall on commitment.

Often those who have it wind up feeling like they should be committed, either voluntarily or by court order, to play out their own version of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

The dedication that Moore and Rooks poured into the Muskegon Film Festival cannot be overstated.

Their work ethic was second to none, exemplary.

Thank them for a job well-done over and beyond any reasonable call of duty.

That said, the Muskegon Film Festival’s demise should not have surprised anybody who knew what was paying attention.

Well before MFF’s death notice, the festival’s web site had vanished from cyberspace, and so had MFF’s history synopsis on Wikipedia.

The idea for the Muskegon Film Festival was born in Saugatuck, at the turn of the past decade.

It was born during the Waterfront Film Festival that is held each June and has evolved into one of Midwest’s most successful film festivals.

Everybody who got involved agreed that a film festival would be a great way to showcase the crown jewel of downtown Muskegon, the historic Frauenthal.